Consumers have grown accustomed to having their phone calls answered by an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system for routing their call to different parties and/or to generate automated voice announcements. Likewise, consumers are accustomed to being immediately placed on hold when the call is directed to a physician, even if only for making an appointment, or to a public governmental agency, utility, insurance company, airline and/or a variety of different business establishments. In each instance a conventional IVR is unable to distinguish whether the call originates from a wireless phone or a land line telephone and is unable to provide the caller with options to receive SMS and/or MMS messages from the called party while the call is being processed or when the call is placed on hold. The conventional response of an IVR system is the transmission of an audible message, advertisement or simply an announcement. The message or announcement may place the caller “on hold” until the called party or a representative of the called party becomes available. This may result in the loss of considerable time during which the caller or consumer is not productively being engaged. Moreover, limiting a telephone caller to background music and/or to an audible announcement or advertisement, particularly when placed on hold, is very frustrating to a telephone caller. Companies would prefer to be able to control what is delivered to the caller and to engage the caller/consumer in an interactive activity beneficial to both parties during these quiescent time periods which to date is not currently available.
The present invention overcomes this problem and engages the caller/consumer as the call is being processed by distinguishing between a wireless call and a wire line call and by providing the caller/consumer the option to utilize a mobile (cellular) telephone to receive SMS and/or MMS messages and/or video or links from the called party to link the mobile device of the caller to a web site of the called recipient and/or to enroll in a contest or receive coupons etc., with the information to be sent to the mobile device of the caller throughout the quiescent period while on hold or during or following the end of the call.
The present invention also provides the called party with control over the type or kind of messaging to be delivered through an IVR to a caller by detecting and logging demographic information of the caller from the telephone call and generating therefrom a demographic profile of the caller to differentiate and classify the caller based upon retrieving demographic information from the internet, such as, the median income level of the geographical area of the caller and/or information such as census data for the geographical area in which the call originates and/or the typical languages spoken in the area from which the call originates for making a selection of the type and kind of IVR message to be delivered to the caller based upon the caller profile.